Business Traveller (Asia-Pacific)
A town with tales to tell
Margie T Logarta discovers a heady historical mix in an old preserved district of Tainan City in southwestern Taiwan
It’s a real pity that more and more cities in Asia-Pacific are sacrificing their heritage buildings in the name of “progress” – usually a euphemism for developers’ shiny master plans for the future. Hong Kong, as we sadly know, is a prime example; Singapore in the 1990s was tearing down exquisite shophouses in Chinatown until some far-sighted minds in government put a stop to the wrecking ball; while in Manila, stagnancy has claimed the 17th century Intramuros complex, which still has its sturdy walls and a turret or two, but not much to boast about in terms of exciting restoration initiatives to attract a new generation of visitors.
It’s a pleasure, therefore, to discover the district of Anping, part of Tainan City on the southwest coast of Taiwan, which is a pearl in the preservation efforts of proud local residents and officials alike. This much-storied town has felt the hand of many masters, from the Dutch colonisers to the Koxinga period, the subsequent Qing administration to the Japanese regime – a rich mix of bygone cultures that adds to its overall character. The Tourism Bureau of Taiwan further burnished this unique reputation last year by including Anping in its list of “Top 10 Tourist Towns”.
Daoyuan – Anping’s early name and probably also where the name “Taiwan” originates – was originally an islet separated from Tainan by a shallow lagoon. As such, it attracted foreigners as a good place to set up base, both for trade and expanding power, but due to changing ocean currents, over time it silted up until it finally joined the mainland.
The Dutch East India Company (VOC) led the way, establishing Fort Zeelandia in 1624. Thirtyseven years later their fortifications were attacked by Ming general and loyalist Koxinga, as he fled from the emergent Qing dynasty on the mainland. With the help of 25,000 soldiers on hundreds of ships and
junks, he took Fort Zeelandia and renamed it Anping – the name stuck and has remained to this day. Koxinga established the beginnings of the salt-making industry, which gained a good reputation for Tainan, and even invited the British to set up a commercial trading post. The Japanese soon saw a business opportunity in salt making and hotfooted it to Anping, adding their expertise to expand the market.
“Shio”, 10 minutes away from Anping’s old precinct, is a restored Japanese salt merchant’s house and store that today sells artisanal salt, as well as salt-encrusted, hard-boiled eggs painted in a rainbow of hues, which visitors enjoy on the pleasant backyard lawn. Capitalising on Taiwanese people’s penchant for anything kawaii (“cute” – a uniquely East Asian element of pop culture), most visitors are instantly charmed by an enormous display of salts corresponding to each day of the year and accompanied by a character attribute. No explanation is given as to how each type of salt matches each date, but during my trip everyone, including myself, seemed charmed with what they discovered.
From 1864 onwards, Anping became a buzzing entrepôt swarming with wheelers and dealers from England and Europe. The five most prominent were Tait & Co, Bains & Co, Boyd & Co, Wright & Co and Julius Mainich and Co. The estates of Tait & Co and Julius Mainich are two of the best preserved, and these should not be missed during a walking tour of the neighbourhood.
In the Tait & Co Merchant House, a meticulously laid out exhibit of 17th century household artefacts affords a glimpse of daily life in centuries past. But in truth, it’s the Anping Treehouse that claims the greatest attention from visitors to the estate. Unlike the usual playhouse nestled in a tree, a group of banyan trees have taken over the ruins of Tait & Co’s warehouse – with a vengeance. Aerial roots, vines and trunks have crept up on the abandoned structures until their stranglehold was complete and irreversible. It’s now hard to discern whether the walls support the trees or vice versa.
A sturdy black metal walkway wends its way above the overgrowth, and viewing platforms offer the best panorama of the trees’ advance as well as the lush mangroves of the Yanshui River beyond. Weekends tend to be rather chaotic and overrun with sightseeing hordes, so if you have any fantasies of wandering through the rooms and into the past, choose a weekday for your visit.
As a former Dutch enclave, many of Anping’s streets date back to the 17th century, especially those at the base of Anping Fort such as Yanping and Xiaozhong, near Haishan Hostel. These two also run off into smaller but equally colourful lanes and alleys, where simpler lives play out in unburnished surroundings, providing numerous photo ops for the intrepid observer.
See those lion heads with spears across their mouths on some of the door lintels? The practice, said to protect the house and its residents against evil, is slowly dying out. Or those lantern-shaped window frames, which give the plainest structure a charming appearance? Not many turn up these days in more modern homes.
The swell of vendors, eateries, shops and gaming stalls, particularly on weekends, creates a nostalgic yearning for the days when gatherings like these provided entertainment and excitement for countryside communities, a chance for neighbours to catch up and young people to hang out with their peers and flirt with the opposite sex. Veteran hotelier Wolfgang Krueger, former general manager of Shangri-La’s Far Eastern Plaza Hotel Taipei, waxes lyrical about Anping’s great sense of place: “One can feel what it must have been like when the Dutch first arrived here. In a wonderful way, and despite the progress that Tainan has seen since becoming the IT hub of Taiwan, Anping has stayed remarkably historic and retains that small town character.”